While Tim Morse remains Yahoo's chief financial officer, Barrett will focus on new and existing ways to generate revenue for the company, rather than look after Yahoo's finances.

He has been at Google since his company Admeld was acquired by the search giant last year for around $400 million. He will report directly to interim chief executive Ross Levinsohn.

It's an interesting hire. While unexpected, it hardly comes as a surprise. Beyond anything else, Yahoo has to get its advertising groove back on.

Barrett was Fox Interactive's chief revenue officer in 2006---2008. It's also not the first time he's worked at Yahoo, after leaving the then-booming Web giant after only seven months in 1999.

Out with the old, in with the new: there's been a revolving door of chief executives at Yahoo as of late, and Levinsohn is charged with getting the company back on track. Former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson didn't even get a chance before he "resigned" from the company following the 'Resumegate' scandal.

One of the first 'policies' to get Yahoo back on track was to get the company's ad space back into the limelight.

Yahoo posted only $1.08 billion revenue during the first quarter --- just 1 percent increase on the same period a year earlier --- something just had to be done. Google and Yahoo are obvious rivals in the ad space. Granted, Yahoo is way behind Google --- the worldwide search behemoth --- which takes more than 95 percent of its revenue from ads.

According to AllThingsD's sources, Yahoo is considering a plan to sell or abandon large parts of its advertising tech business and instead rely on third-party suppliers, including Google.

Thank You

By registering you become a member of the CBS Interactive family of sites and you have read and agree to the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Video Services Policy. You agree to receive updates, alerts and promotions from CBS and that CBS may share information about you with our marketing partners so that they may contact you by email or otherwise about their products or services.
You will also receive a complimentary subscription to the ZDNet's Tech Update Today and ZDNet Announcement newsletters. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time.